The Monster

There used to be a monster under my bed. He was made up of pieces of nightmares, dreams and parts of old toys. He was a strange and special creature, his veins were filled with magic, not blood.

He told me that once, a beautiful djinni princess, who lives in the palace of clouds, pricked her little finger with a needle. A drop of blood trickled down her finger, dropped down through the light, fluffy clouds and spilled onto the peak of a snow-topped mountain. There, buried under snow and ice, the drop of djinni blood froze into a single, sparkling ruby. That ruby was the right eye of the monster under my bed - it's his special, magic eye, the eye through which he sees the shape of a person's thoughts.

"I know what you're thinking," he whispered to me one night, as I lay in my bed, warm under my thick comforter.

I was a little scared, I was always afraid when I lay in bed alone at night. At night, it was only me and the monster, and he scared me.

"You needn't be scared, really," the monster told me. "I can't come out from under the bed. So you're safe from me."

I was curious now. "Why can't you come out?"

"I can't come out," he said shamefacedly, "because I can't do much. I can't eat you or do anything nasty to you. I can only live under your bed." The monster coughed, then. It was a dry, wheezing cough, and it was then that I realized he had a bad cold.

"Do you have a cold?" I asked him.

"Yes. It's cold at night, and it isn't very warm under your bed, especially with the windows open." He sneezed again.

The next night, I closed the windows before I went to bed. It was stuffy in my little room, and I threw off the bedcovers, as I became hot in my bed. I was about to climb out of bed and open the windows, when the monster spoke.

"Thank you for closing the windows," he whispered to me. "That was very kind of you. And thank you for the scarf you left under your bed. It's really handy, now that I have a sorethroat."

I tossed and turned, I couldn't go to sleep. "Can you tell me a story?" I asked the monster.

So the monster began to tell me a story.

He told me how the moon's youngest daughter, the brightest star, fell sick. She twinkled less and less, fading as the nights wore by. One night, as the moon rose into the sky, she was saddened to find a patch of darkness where her youngest daughter had sparkled. A single tear dripped down the moon's pockmarked face and fell down to earth.

An egyptian queen caught it, as it fell to earth, and she made it into a pendant and fixed onto a gold necklace. She wore it always, and for every day she wore it, she became more beautiful than the day before. Many wars were fought, many kingdoms fell because of her beauty. But one day, as she swam in the waters of the Nile, the clasp of the necklace came undone. The pendant swirled away in the waters, and even as the queen tried to reach for it, it floated out off her grasp and was borne away by the current. The pendant drifted down the river, until it was swallowed by a fish. A fisherman caught the fish, and slicing it open, found the tear. It was a beautiful, sparkling thing and he gave it to his baby daughter to play with.

"And then what happened?" I asked. "What happened to the tear?"

"I found the tear," the monster told me, "under the fisherman's daughter's bed, as she slept. Now I wear it on a chain wrapped around my heart."

I was impressed. "I want to see the tear," I said.

"Shush," the monster whispered, "not now. Morning is coming, and I'll go away soon. Perhaps tommorow or the night after."

The next night I asked him - "Where did you live before, before me?"

"I've always lived here, under your bed," he said. "Even before you were a boy, I've been here, waiting for you. This is my home, my only home."

"Can I see you?"

"But I could eat you, or scare you, or turn you into a radish," the monster argued. He started to cough, his cold still hadn't gone away. "Aren't you scared of that?"

But I wasn't. "I'm going away," I told him. "I'm going to visit my grandparents in another city."

"Will you be gone for long?" The monster sounded worried.

"Just for a short while. I'll be back."

"Will you get me something?" He asked. "Just a bottle of cough syrup, because my cold doesn't seem to go away."

I nodded, and pulled my comforter closer, and closed my eyes.

The monster sighed, a tired sigh. "Oh, all right," he said, just a bit grumpy. "You might as well see me before you go. But you'll have to come down here, under the bed. I can't come up there."

So, I leapt off my bed, rolled onto my belly, and like a snake, slithered under my bed.

The monster was there, under the bed. He was made of darkness and shadow, dreams and nightmares and broken things. I looked at his right eye - the ruby eye, from the blood of his djinni. And his left eye, taken from my oldest teddy bear, given to me on my first birthday. His heart was made from cotton candy, and his lips were fashioned from the first kiss my mother had given me. His right hand was the broken arm of a tin solider I used to play with, and on his left wrist he wore my old wristwatch. And around his heart, on a golden chain, I saw the moon's tear.

As I watched him, a tear rolled from the corner of his teddy-bear eye, down his cheek.

"Why do you cry?" I wanted to know.

"Because you will grow up and forget me...and I will disappear."

"No!" I cried, "I'll never forget you."

"But you will still grow up," the monster said, sadly, "and I will still disappear."

The next day I went to spend the summer with my grandparents. At night, I peeked under my bed, but there was no monster waiting for me. I missed the monster, but many things happened that summer, I grew older, I had many adventures, I learnt many things. A week grew into two weeks, and finally into a month, before I returned home. When I came back, I could hardly wait for it to be night, so that I could tell the monster about all the things that happened to me.

"Monster!" I said, "I have so much to tell you. I missed you very much! Did you miss me?"

There was no answer.

"Look!" I said to the monster, "I brought you a bottle of cough syrup. It will make you feel better."

But still the monster didn't say anything.

I pulled off the bedcovers and raced under the bed.

"Monster, monster!" I cried out, worried now. "Where are you?"

But there was only darkness under my bed.